Now that they've officially declared bankruptcy, Detroit can start to turn around. The rest of US cities that haven't found a way to deal with shortfalls, well, they can see the writing on the wall in this article. The big banks are still getting paid. They own us.

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Detroit cannot start to turn around until they stop voting for Santa clause. What'll turn them around isn't going to be the actions of a special executive, or any restructuring of their debt. All that'll do is finagle the clock. What they must do in order to turn things around is to become friendlier to businesses, to encourage investment by fostering a friendlier regulatory environment, and to reduce the tax burden on those businesses and property owners that remain. All else is giving aspirin to a cancer patient. May alleviate the symptoms for a bit, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Kinda like the "pay" & bonus "contracts" which were upheld for the bankster CEO's during the too-big-to-fail bail-outs?

Kinda like the money the Fed sends the state which end up going towards the rich white towns of corrupt politicians?

Or... like Obama's campaign promise to help the middle class, and labor, who got him elected, and who said he would put on his marching shoes and march alongside workers - but is keeping hands of of Detroit as he did with Wisconsin?

Maybe more like like all the taxes which well-off Detroit workers payed into the system(s) from the 1950s to the 1990s, to help out the rest of the country, and the state, and the city - but which is not at all paid back in kind now that they are in need of help...

But it isn't so. I just care with all my heart - unless I am brain-fucked by CFS. I have always been this way, as a "privileged white male", even when I was nearing graduation, with all the world as my oyster. Maybe something like a poor, unknown Kennedy.

On the other hand, as a result of taking the road less travelled, I have gone through much suffering and poverty, which has always meant that I have never forgotten my upbringing in a poor/middle-class irish family, (even though my siblings apparently have).

I don't tolerate greediness or hypocrisy well - or lack or empathy. Those pensions in Michigan were not false promises - they were carved right into the Michigan constitution as being GUARANTEED. (I believe it is article 9 section 24, or the reverse). The fact that the overarching Federal government supposedly trumps this guarantee does not remove the fact that the pensions were meant to be as-good-as-gold - as well they should have been, because they never belonged to the state, but to the workers.

As went Wisconsin, Detroit is yet another test to further legitimise obscene and dysfunctional privitisation for cities across the country, under the stealthy rationalisation of, "austerity." It is part of the grander silent coup by Kochs, the banks, etc., to milk us like peons. It is not only inhumane, it is also, (consequently), economic madness.

Ah yes, the bleeding heart is still alive and well. Well I appreciate your idealism and suffer with you in the grand hypocrisy that is our way of life now. People are only valuable to each other, and of little use to corporations except as fodder for the mill.